


A Night In The Car

by samcat



Series: Q's Vacation [4]
Category: James Bond (Craig movies)
Genre: Autistic Character, Canonical Autistic Character, Established Relationship, M/M, Q is Autistic, Roadtrip, it's a fact
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-07
Updated: 2016-09-07
Packaged: 2018-08-13 18:51:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7982350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/samcat/pseuds/samcat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Booked motel rooms for us as well, have you?”<br/>“No,” Q shook his head. “I thought it would be more discreet to sleep in the car, actually.”<br/>“That’s a surprise,” James said.<br/>“I’m glad I’m not as utterly predictable as you thought.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Night In The Car

“Wake up, sleepyhead.”  
“Ugh,” Q turned over to his side and tried to pull the cover over his head. He was not used to waking up this early.  
James, already fully dressed, pulled the cover right back down. “Get up.”  
Squinting up at James, Q yawned. “You know we could just say fuck it and take a plane instead of doing this.”  
“Where’s the fun in that?”  
“Work is not about fun, James.”  
“Not with that attitude.”  
“You have never in your life chosen to travel long distances like this by car before,” Q rubbed his eyes. “What’s changed?”  
“I thought we could enjoy a roadtrip together.”  
“May I remind you, again, that we’re supposed to be working? We aren’t on vacation anymore. Besides,” he continued, “I still don’t see why I have to go with you. I’m sure I would be able to assist you from back home in Q-branch as per usual.”  
James shook his head. “ _Come on_ , Q. Last night you sounded excited to be brought along.”  
“I hide nervousness with excitement.”  
“That’s a lie.”  
Q looked down sheepishly.  
“Yes,” he admitted. “But I didn’t have the time to think it through properly last night. Now I realise that this is a bad idea.”

Last night, the two of them had been assigned a mission - in Poland. However, they were not allowed to fly out there.

MI6 had gotten some, according to M, rather alarming bomb threats lately. Someone had contacted them claiming to have hacked into their system and gotten access to the information sent out by some of the agents’ implanted GPS trackers. And the thread read that if any of them got on a plane - or as much as set foot at an airport - ‘they would regret it’.

Q had tried to convince both his coworkers (who had listened to him) and his superiors (who had ignored him) that it was an empty threat. He tried to explain to them that their - _his_ \- system had not been hacked, that it could not have been hacked. And if it had been, the hacker would surely have used this information to quietly assassinate the agents rather than sending them a warning. There was no reason for them to be playing this pointless game.

But they had not listened to reason and had banned all of the agents supposedly affected by this from flying. And James was one of those agents. So now they were going to be traveling to Poland by car.

They had taken the train to France the night before, but since the mission was not overly time sensitive, they had allowed themselves to sleep there for a few hours before driving on.

“You’re just tired,” James grabbed his wrists and pulled him up into a sitting position. “Get dressed. You’ll have time to wake up in the car.”  
“Stop talking to me as if I’m a child.”  
“Only when stop acting like one.”  
Q sighed and made a face at James, but stood up and stretched.  
He pulled on the pants he had worn yesterday, but left yesterday’s shirt where it was. If they were going on a roadtrip, he thought, he should make sure to wear comfortable clothes. And as nice as his button-up shirts were, they inevitably made his skin itch after a few hours.  
“Fetch me a sweater, will you,” Q gestured towards the chest of drawers.  
“Don’t talk to me like I’m your lap dog.”  
“If you talk to me like I’m a child, I will talk to you like you’re a dog. Now, fetch.”  
James stared at him for a few seconds before shaking his head and doing as he was told. Q was finally up out of bed and on the move, so now was not the time for starting an argument.

-

“We’re not going on a vacation, Q,” James said as Q hauled in a backpack and his camera bag into the backseat, having put the rest of their baggage in the boot yesterday. “ _You_ reminded _me_ of that just a few minutes ago.”  
“I am well aware of that, thank you,” Q said while he got into the passenger seat and fastened his seatbelt. “But if I am going to spend the next few days in a car together with you, I will need something to distract me.”  
“ _‘Few days’_? Q, we can get there in less than twentyfour hours.”  
“We’re not going to drive that fast. And we’re certainly not going to drive all the way at once. We’re going to stop and rest at these places-” he held up his phone to show James a map with their route, with marks along the way where he knew there would be rest stops and gas stations. He had taken the time to create this map before falling asleep last night, making sure to pick out places that were a bit off the main roads in order to avoid unnecessary attention.  


James, however, was not interested in it. He pushed Q’s hand away without looking at what he was shown.  
“We don’t need to stop that often. In fact, I bet I can drive us there without needing to stop for anything more than a few piss breaks.”  
“You cannot. James, I barely trust your driving skills when you are rested. I don’t want to be trapped in a car that you’re driving when you’re exhausted.”  
“Who says I will be exhausted?”  
“Reality. You cannot drive for that long without stopping to rest every now and then.”  
“We’re not stopping at all of those places,” James gestured towards the map that was still being displayed at Q’s phone.  
“Half of them, then.”  
“A third.”  
Q sighed, but agreed. A third was still better than none.

The first hour of driving was spent in silence. A somewhat awkward silence, Q thought. Normally he appreciated peace and quiet - it let him get properly lost in his thoughts, it let him focus. But right now he wouldn’t mind some small talk. And as if James could read his mind, he broke the silence.  
“Booked motel rooms for us as well, have you?”  
“No,” Q shook his head. “I thought it would be more discreet to sleep in the car, actually.”  
“That’s a surprise,” James said.  
“I’m glad I’m not as utterly predictable as you thought.”  
“Don’t flatter yourself too much,” James took his eyes of the road to look at Q. “I can still read you like an open book most of the time.”  
Q scrunched up his nose at him. “Oh can you now? What am I thinking of right now, then?”  
James kept looking at him for a few seconds before he turned back his focus to the road. “You’re thinking that I’m the most attractive person you have ever laid eyes on.”  
Q laughed. “I’m amazed you managed to fit your ego into this car.”  
James smiled as if he was about to laugh, but said nothing.  


They fell back into silence. This time, a more comfortable one.

A couple of hours passed in that silence. Q had reached back into the back seat and grabbed his camera. It had taken a solid few minutes to get it out of the camera bag - after the modifications Q had made to it, it only just barely fit into the bag anymore and getting it out required a lot of careful wiggling.

He tried to snap a few shots out of the windows of the car, but the lighting was far from ideal for picture taking. If Q had been shown only the weather and none of the landscapes or landmarks, he would have thought they were still in England. A very familiar heavy blanket of grey clouds was covering the whole sky.

Frowning, he started working on putting the camera back into the bag. That, too, required an awful lot of careful wiggling and patience, so it kept him busy for a good couple of minutes.  
He could feel James watching him, but didn’t acknowledge it until the camera was back in its bag and tossed back into the backseat.  
“Are my struggles entertaining you?”  
“If that’s what you define as a struggle, then yes, it is very entertaining.”  
“You’re a prick, you know that?” Q sighed.  
“I do.”  
“Will you please at least stop sounding so smug about it?”  
“I’ll try, but I can’t make you any promises,” James said and winked at him.  


Q stopped himself from rolling his eyes and turned to look out of the side window. Watching things move past like this used to make him motion sick as a child, but that was something he had thankfully outgrown. Now he found it relaxing. Seeing the world move past him while he himself was unmoving was a calming thing to him. And that was one of the reasons he much prefered to be a passenger than a driver - when he was driving, there were too many things to keep track of inside the car. It made him stressed and unable to appreciate the scenery.

-

Even though they had agreed on only stopping at every third stop that Q had planned, he still loudly pointed the first two out and sighed heavily when James drove past them. He knew he was being obnoxious, but he couldn’t help himself. Besides, teasing James was always a fun pastime.

But once he pointed out that they were approaching the third one, James neither ignored him nor argued with him about it. Instead he reached over and grabbed Q’s phone to look at the map.

It was a gas station - which was a good thing. Although they were not yet desperately low on fuel, they could use a refill. And Q was happy to get a chance to stock up on chocolate bars and sandwiches. So while James fueled up the car, Q went into the small shop nearby.

The flickering of the fluorescent lights in store made Q’s head hurt almost immediately. Thankfully there weren’t any other customers in there, so at least he wouldn’t have to stand waiting in a queue in this hellishly lit room.

If the weather hadn’t been so grey, he could have justified wearing his sunglasses, even indoors. He had packed a pair just for an occasion like this - he knew that they were likely to encounter places with lighting like this and he knew that it would bother him. But as it were now, wearing sunglasses would only have served to make him look suspicious.

He quickly grabbed what he wanted and paid for it. And had it not been for his worries about seeming suspicious, he might have simply ran out the store after that. But instead he only allowed himself to leave at what he hoped was a normal walking pace.

The steady grey light outside was a relief to his eyes as he moved back towards the car.

James was standing leaned against it, legs crossed. Q wished he had brought his camera with him out of the car - a picture of James like this would have been a nice addition to his steadily growing collection of photos of him.

Slightly creeped out by his own thoughts, Q opened the car door and placed his purchases on top of his bags in the backseat. He noticed that James showed no signs of moving to get back into the car while he was doing this. Once he closed the car door, he walked up next to James and leaned back against the car as well, mimicking his stance.  
“Not in a rush to get back on the road?”  
James shrugged. “It’s nice to get to stretch my legs out again.”  
“Does that mean you’ve changed your mind about my regular rest-stop plan?”  
“Stopping that often would be overdoing it,” James pushed himself off the car. “But every third stop seems to be worth it.”  
Q smiled at him and walked around the car to get back into the passenger seat.

-

James slowed down to a standstill, causing Q to look away from his phone and up at James.  
“What are you doing?” he said. “Oh shit,” he continued, after looking out of the windscreen. The road ahead of them was closed off and a police officer was approaching them.

James lowered his window and spoke to the officer while Q tapped away at his phone. It should have warned him in advance that this road would be closed, unless it had closed very recently. Which, as it turns out, it had. He overheard the officer mention a car crash - a pretty serious one, apparently. He shook his head minutely and turned back his complete focus to his phone as he started planning a new route for them.

When the officer had walked away, James turned to Q.  
“So, where to now?”  
“We’re gonna have to backtrack a few… uh... for a while. But we should be able to catch up on some of the lost time tomorrow.”

The sky had already gotten significantly darker since the last time they stopped. Part of it had to do with that the looming clouds seemed to have thickened, but evening was arriving quickly and the sun would soon set completely.

James sighed. “Okay. Show me the map.”  
Q handed over his phone to James.  
“Could you close your window again?” He was still only wearing dress pants and a sweater and he was already shivering from the cold.  
“Of course,” James said and raised it. “Sorry.”  
“Don’t worry about it,” Q said with one last shudder.  
James look at him for a few seconds, then shrugged and looked back down at the map on the phone. A minute later he handed the phone back to Q and turned around, one arm resting on the back of his seat, to see where he was going as he reversed back along the narrow road they were on.  
Q watched him quietly until he had turned their car around and started driving forwards again.  
“Should I read you the directions?”  
“No need. I memorized the route you had marked out.”  
“Seriously? That quickly?”  
“I wouldn’t be much good as an agent if I couldn’t absorb information quickly, would I?”  
“Perhaps not. That is still rather impressive, though.”  
“I managed to impress the all-mighty Q? Mark this day down in history.”  
“Don’t be such a git about it,” Q shook his head is annoyance, but couldn’t help smiling.  
He put his phone back into the pocket of his sweater and looked over at James. “I’ll let you drive us to our destination without bothering you with directions, then.”  
“Good. I will stop and buy us both a coffee at the first place I see selling it, though. I think we both need that right now.”

-

 

As the clock on the dashboard approached midnight, they stopped again.  
“Fuck,” Q whispered. Once again the road ahead of them was closed. He fumbled to get his phone up again and was momentarily blinded by the light of the screen. Blinking rapidly, he tried to force his eyes to get used to the light so that he could see what was going on.

After a few seconds, his the screen in front of him came back into focus.  
There was an alert of the road being closed this time. But since he hadn’t bothered to check the phone after that James had told me he’d memorized the route, he hadn’t noticed it. Feeling embarrassed, he continued fiddling with his phone while he was thinking about what to say.  
“The, uh. The road is closed.”  
“I can see that, Q,” James sighed.  
Q was silent again for a few seconds. Then he sighed too. “I’d gotten an alert telling me this road was closed but I didn’t notice it. I’m sorry. But there is a rest stop nearby where we could spend the night.”  
James sighed again. “It’s hardly your fault that the road is closed,” he said, his voice a bit softer this time. “Where’s the rest stop?”  
Relieved that James apparently wasn’t in the mood to get into an argument, he gave him the directions. The rest stop wasn’t more than a fifteen minute drive away, so there could have been worse places for them to have encountered a roadblock.

When they pulled to a stop at the rest stop, it had started raining heavily. The sound of the drops hitting their car was so loud that Q doubted they would be able to sleep.

They were the only people here, so at least they would be allowed privacy. The cares Q had taken to find remote and less-than-popular places for them to stop at were clearly paying off.

“I thought I had given this car better heating than this,” Q said as he started shivering again.  
“I might have broken that feature.”  
“Without telling me?”  
“I wasn’t in the mood to get lectured by you when it happened. And after that I guess I just forgot.”  
Q sighed. “I suppose I could fix it once we get to our destination, if I’m left with any time to spare.”  
“That’s the spirit.”  
“You really have no respect for what I do, do you?”  
“No no, I do,” James said as he folded his arms on the steering wheel and leaned his weight against it. “I just show it in a way you can’t understand.”  
“Sure you do,” Q said, clearly not believing him.  
“Let me show you how much I love and respect the things you do in a way you can understand, then.”  
James pushed a button near the dashboard and Q’s seat fell back - and Q with it.  
“For fuck’s sake, James.”  
“That’s the general idea, yes,” James replied with a laugh.  
“Seriously?” Q said as James climbed on top of him. But he made no move to stop him from doing what he was doing. Instead he smiled up at him, feeling more curious than annoyed.

James leaned down and kissed his neck, then slowly kissed his way up along his jaw. When his lips reached Q’s, Q put one of his hands on the back of James’ neck.  
Flinching away at the touch, James cursed. “Fuck, your hands are cold.”  
“That’s what you get for breaking the car’s heating,” Q winked and put both of his hands on James’ neck, pulling him down for another kiss.  
James shuddered, but didn’t pull away.

Soon Q’s hands had warmed up - together with the rest of his body. He felt so warm, in fact, that he was not against the idea of taking off his clothes. James, still straddling him, had already lost his jacket and tie as he helped Q pull off his sweater.

The cold air briefly gave his skin goosebumps, but he forgot to pay attention to that when James let his fingers trail along his collarbones. Q moves his own hands down to James’ hips and leaned up to kiss him again. He thought James’ mouth still tasted faintly of the cheap coffee they had bought earlier and he wondered if he still tasted of it himself.

The rest of their clothes came off in quick succession after that, soon leaving them in only their boxers.

James planted kisses from his chest and down his stomach. When he reached his hip bones he sat up and half-turned around to open the glove apartment. Q watched him as he got out a small tube and a condom package.  
“Of course you’ve got lube and condoms with you. Of course you do,” Q said as he rolled his eyes.  
“Shagging people is part of my job.”  
“Shagging me isn’t, though.”  
“It’s a bonus.”  
Q laughed. “I’m not sure how I feel about that comment.”  
“And why’s that?”  
“I’m more than just an accessory in your work, you know.”  
“I know that,” James leaned down to kiss him. “But you are a very lovely accessory, among other things.”  
Q scoffed, but smiled against his lips and kissed him back.  
“Shall we?” James winked at him.  
Smiling and nodding, Q restrained himself from ridiculing James for how formal he made it sound.

After both of them had wiggled out of their boxers, Q readjusted his position under James and smiled up at him expectantly.  
Smiling back, James popped open the tube and lubed up the fingers on his right hand. Using his index finger, he started circling and gently pushing against Q’s hole.

Q closed his eyes and let himself focus entirely on how it felt, let himself relax and get lost in the sensations. He inhaled sharply when James pushed in the finger to the second knuckle, causing him to immediately pull it back out.  
“Going to fast for you?”  
Q hummed and took another, less sharp, break to relax himself again. “We’re not in a rush, are we?”  
“Not at all,” James stroked the inside of his tight with one hand as he let the other go back to slowly circling and pushing.

-

Q sat up on his elbows to kiss James a final time when he pulled out. The kiss was short and harsh, both of them still out of breath. They lingered with their faces close, breathing together.

James caught his breath first and he climbed back into the driver’s seat while pulling his underpants back on, all in a single graceful motion. Once back there, he quickly gathered up the rest of his clothes and started to casually get dressed, starting with the shirt.

“You know, Q, I wish the heating in the car worked right now. Even with all the warming up we just did, I have a feeling it’s going to be a cold night.”  
“Can you not act like that?” Q said, letting his annoyance show in his tone as he wiggled his way back into his boxers.  
“Like what?”  
“The nonchalance. The ‘I’m going to act as if we didn’t just fuck’ ordeal.”  
“I’m not acting as if we didn’t just fuck,” James raised his eyebrows. “Did you not catch the ‘warming up’ comment?”  
“You’re acting as if it wasn’t important. Or significant.”  
“Well, was it? It’s hardly our first time.”  
“Okay, look,” Q sat up and ran his hands through his hair. “Maybe it’s not significant to you. God knows how many people and how many times you have fucked in your life. But it is a big deal to me, every time.”  
“Okay,” James finished buttoning up his shirt and straightened his back. “This got serious.”  
“Yeah, no shit,” Q shook his head and pulled on his pants.  
“Alright, I apologize. But I still think you’re overreacting a bit right now.”  
“That’s not how apologies work,” Q said through the fabric of the sweater that he was pulling over his head. “But thanks for trying.”

He lay down on his side, back against James, and closed his eyes. The rain was still ongoing, but it was no longer at the waterfall-level that it had been before.  
“Don’t be like that,” James brought down the back of his seat and lay down on his side as well, facing Q. “I’m sorry. Talk to me.”  
“Talk about what?”  
“How about you tell me why this is so important to you?”  
“I don’t-”  
“Listen,” James interrupted him. “How am I supposed to give a proper apology if I don’t even know why this is important?”  
“By saying ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t know this was important. Now I do. I promise to not behave like a prick like that again’. It’s not that difficult.”  
James laughed. “Come on.”  
Q turned to lay on his other side so that they were facing each other. “Fine,” he took a breath. “It’s important to me because sex used to be a very rare occurance for me before the two of us got together.”  
“Rare?”  
“Very rare.”  
“How rare, exactly?”  
“The kind of ‘only when I was severely depressed and drunk and desperate’ kind of rare.”  
James raised his eyebrows. “You don’t strike me as the kind of person to allow themselves to wallow in sadness.”  
“I mean actually depressed. Diagnosed,” Q watched as James blinked in surprise.  
“Is that still something you’re dealing with?”  
“Yes, but I have it under control now.”  
James was silent for a moment as he tried - and failed - to read Q’s face. “And you haven’t thought about telling me this until now?”  
“It’s not exactly something you can bring up in a casual conversation.”  
“But our employers are aware of your problems?”  
“Of course they fucking know,” Q snapped. “You think they would have hired me without looking into my mental health records?” He sighed. “But thankfully for me, they are smart enough to trust me when I say I have it under control. And they’re also aware that it’s fairly common for people like me to be depressed, anyway,” he looked down at the space between them. He didn’t trust himself to be able to keep his nervousness from showing on his face anymore if he kept looking directly at James.

“Would you care to define what ‘people like you’ means? Self-proclaimed geniuses?” James smiled carefully, not entirely sure if this was an appropriate time for a joke.  
This time it was Q’s turn to be silent for a few moments. He knew he could just laugh at James’ joke, roll his eyes and say ‘yeah’. It would be easy to do that. But he decided he might as well get this all out now.  
“Autistic.”  
James looked at him, waiting for him to elaborate. Q took a few deep breaths before he looked back at James and continued.  
“I don’t enjoy telling people that I’m autistic, alright? They always look at me differently afterwards,” he gesticulated with one of his hands as he spoke. “I mean, they know I’m different. I don’t need to tell them that. They recognise my autistic traits, I don’t need to tell them about those. But as soon as I give them the reason for why I am like I am, as soon as I give them the word, they change how they view me.”  
He stopped talking to take a few more breaths. He knew that he was talking too fast, but he wanted to get this over with as soon as possible.  
“I like the way you look at me,” he bit his lower lip. “I don’t want that to change.”  
James reached out a hand and stroked Q’s cheek. “That’s not going to change,” he smiled. “So don’t worry about that.”  
Q laughed nervously. “Really?”  
“Of course,” James let his fingers linger on Q’s face. “I will never not be awestruck when I look at you.”

They continued talking for a while after that, their voices getting more and more hushed as time passed, until they both fell asleep.

-

When they got out of the car in the morning, the ground was covered in a layer of slushy snow. Q winced as he put his feet down. He could feel the cold from it through his shoes and he really did not want to get ill, so he quickly walked half a dozen paces away from the car to take a piss. James did the same, but thankfully in a different direction. Regardless of how close they were, Q appreciated having at least some privacy in the mornings.

Back by the car, having dug through the bag in the backseat to find his toothbrush and toothpaste, he looked up to see James standing next to him.  
“Good morning?”  
“Good morning,” James smiled at him. “Can I have some?” He motioned towards the tube of toothpaste with the toothbrush he was holding in his hand.  
Q begrudgingly handed over the tube to James.  
“Didn’t think to bring your own?”  
“I almost didn’t bring a toothbrush. Figured we could share,” James smirked.  
“I’m glad you came to your senses and realised that that wasn’t going to happen,” Q took the tube back once James was done with it.

They brushed their teeth and got back into the car in silence. Both seats raised back up, James turned on the engine and looked over at Q.  
“Got the map ready?”  
“Of course,” he pulled up his phone and read the directions out loud to James.

The first couple of miles passed without either of them mentioning the night before, but Q eventually gave in.  
“Look, last night, that wasn’t a conversation I actually wanted to have. I know you said you wouldn’t change the way you looked at me and I trust you on that, but I don’t want anything else to change either. We’ve been great and I’d like us to go back to being great and-”  
“Q,” James held up a hand. “We’re still great. None of what you told me yesterday changes that.”  
Q swallowed. “Are you sure?”  
“Yes of course I am. You’re Q, you’re brilliant, you’re autistic and I love you,” James looked at him. “Same as before. The only thing that has changed is that I now know one more thing about you.”  
Q smiled and looked down at his lap. As blunt as James could be sometimes, he rarely was this open about his emotions. But Q knew that he meant what he said.  
“I love you too.”

**Author's Note:**

> I always have two main goals with my writing:
> 
> 1) Make it queer  
> 2) Make it Autistic
> 
> Got the queer bit done from the start, so I figured it’s about time to make the autism obvious as well.


End file.
